He has admitted it. Whenever the stress of the game becomes too much, Sachin finds much needed relief in the simple task of washing his cars. Well, we can understand his plight. It is not an easy job playing the game as well as playing god for the fans who insist on a topnotch performance every time. Similarly not only in cricket, but in other walks of life too, people give up their mainstream activity for a trivial pursuit, because that enables them to perform better in their original activity. Paradoxically, we may as well find street urchins who wash cars for their daily bread playing cricket to forget their worries of life in a metropolitan city.
But the question still remains: Why should someone give up an activity which has either earned him millions or given him a fan following and settle for something else? Is it simply impossible to enjoy a particular material activity forever? Or should we just compromise and settle with the thought that this is how life is and all talk of ever-new and ever-increasing pleasure from just one pursuit is simply too good to be true? For a start, let us understand the true position of the philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam.
Once, Srila Prabhupada was asked, "What do you devotees do for your recreation?" And he answered, "Our whole process is a process of recreation." And so it is. Locana Dasa Thakura, a celebrated devotee poet of Bengal, has described the process of krishna bhakti as kevala ananda-kanda, or the pathway of pure bliss. Simply by chanting the holy name of Krishna, eating the remnants of sumptuous food offered to the Supreme Lord and hearing the enchanting pastimes of the Personality of Godhead, one enters into an ocean of bliss called Krishna consciousness.
The Bhagavad-gita (5.22) raises an important issue about material activities and their inability to give pleasure endlessly. It says, "An intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due to contact with the material senses. 0 son of Kunti, such pleasures have a beginning and an end, and so the wise man does not delight in them." It is inevitable that whoever we might be, one day we will feel satiated with a particular activity which was intensely pleasurable once, and at this moment it is intensely miserable. Similarly, even in the transcendental realm, dry speculative arguments will lead us to a whole plane of intense misery and we will be forced to fall down to the material plane. Lord Krishna warns about this situation in the gita (12.5): "For those whose minds are attached to the unmanifested, impersonal feature of the Supreme, advancement is very troublesome. To make progress in that discipline is always difficult for those who are embodied." Even if someone gives up the materialistic path of sense enjoyment and decides to concentrate on the impersonal aspect of God, he is still discouraged, as it won't fulfill his innermost desires.
If the question is raised as to why Krishna should be the object of our meditation, it is clearly described in the Vedas that he is the reservoir of all happiness and he is always situated in bliss. Srila Prabhupada once joked that Krishna is never seen operating a big machine or smoking. By nature he is simply full of pleasure, and that is why he is the goal of all those intelligent people who want unadulterated, ever fresh, and ever-increasing pleasure in life.